Here is a new concept illustration for a mobile game app idea I developed for my graduate MFA in Illustration at Hartford Art School. In 'Crowd Surfer,' players bounce their phone or tablet to the rhythm of their own music library to keep the crowd riled up and avatar afloat, moving slowly toward the stage during the course of a song. Meanwhile, players tilt the phone left or right to keep their avatar level, lest they fall on their head or getting caught on fire by raised lighters in the crowd.

I'm a huge fan of the brilliant and multitalented Louis CK - stand-up comedian and writer/director/actor of the FX series Louie.
This portrait is an amalgam of my own cartoon style with
inspiration from the painting method of master caricature artist and
illustrator CF 'Chris' Payne (who I've just had the pleasure of studying with at Hartford Art School's low residency MFA in Illustration program).

Using
colored pencil, acrylic wash, oil paint wash, and watercolor to build
layers of value over an caricature sketch, Payne's method allows you to
work in both additive and reductive ways, by laying down base tones and
shadow color with the flexibility of pulling out highlights with
watercolor brushes and erasers.

Here's a shot of the base sketch. Who knows, I may find myself starting a series of comedian portraits in this style.

Here's a link to the official Louis site if you're curious. Prints of the above portrait are available in my Etsy shop, and help to fund my art supplies. Yay!

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Tried something new this morning and took a time-lapse video of the above Triceratops ink drawing in process. I thought it might be fun to share the actual process of laying in different line weights and shading the form, set to some classic Ren & Stimpy music. The color was later added digitally with a wacom intuos tablet. Take a look below!